


In Nuendo

by hellkitty



Category: Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-15
Updated: 2012-12-15
Packaged: 2017-11-21 05:06:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/593755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty





	In Nuendo

For tf_speedwriting's advent calendar, prompt [this picture](http://archiveofourown.org%20http:).  
Warnings:sophomoric sexual humor, ref sticky

“Look, we know what we’re doing, okay?” Misfire gave an affronted sort of huff at Fulcrum’s dubious look.

“Yeah, well, thanks for reassuring me. I kinda had my doubts when we, you know, flew straight into a moon.”  Nice piloting. Seriously. 

“Sarcasm? Was that sarcasm, pinhead?”  Misfire frowned, jumping off the hatch’s lip, to the ground where Fulcrum waited.

“No. It was just deadpan optimism,” Fulcrum countered. Really, maybe they should, you know, do something? Other than bicker?  This 'Nuendo' place looked inhospitable enough. And by inhospitable, he meant 'dark and smelled bad'.

“Cram it, both of you.” Crankcase picked his way into the not-really-necessary-right-now airlock, hand out to compensate for the fact that the floor was tilted at a 38-degree angle. In the darkness, his optics glowed, wobbling dots of red as he moved. “Been to check on Krok. He’s fine, thanks for asking.”

“I miss Krok,” Spinister said, blankly, staring around the pile of rubble in front of them.

“We all do, Spinner,” Misfire said, reaching over to pat the mech’s head.

“I don’t. Not really,” Fulcrum said, sourly.  Though at least Krok would have a plan. Not much of one, but then again it wasn’t much of a ship. He'd been learning to lower expectations.

Not much of a crew, either, for that matter.

“Bah,” Crankcase snapped. “Now you’re just being perverse.”

Fulcrum shrugged. “Just saying we could be doing something. You know. To get out of here.”

“Where’s the sky?” Spinister said, turning around in a circle, facing upward.

….good question, Fulcrum thought, looking up.  Which was actually pretty terrifying. Uh, the fact he was agreeing with Spinister, not the fact that there didn’t seem to be any sky or stars or anything above them.

Spinister stopped, whirling toward them. “Maybe gravity’s broke!”

Whew. Relief. Still smarter than Spinister. “Gravity’s not broken or we wouldn’t all be standing.”

“It’s called ‘we’re underground’,” Crankcase muttered.  “Cave or something.” 

“OR SOMETHING! I vote ‘or something.’”  Misfire bounced. “Maybe we flew into the mouth of a Hephtiliac Asteroid Worm or something!”

“You don’t get to vote on this sort of thing,” Fulcrum said. “Besides, that’s a terrible thing to vote for.” He'd seen, in his terraforming days, uh, Hephtiliac coprolites. Gross. Sure, good source of raw elemental material, useful as all get out in cyberformng, but he had no desire to become quite that useful.

“Scrap. Seriously,” Misfire said. “Who sucked all the fun out of you?”

“Is _that_ what you were doing last night with him?” Spinister asked, optics focusing on his interface hatch. “I mean, it kinda makes sense, to store fun down there, and all.”

Yyyyyeah. Fulcrum had figured the dayroom was a bad choice of location.  Proof positive. But Misfire had a way of being convincing. And annoying. Connoying.

“Someone sucked all the smarts out of you and then threw them back up in your head,” Crankcase snapped. “We gonna stand here filling my cortex with images that I have to tag ‘DO NOT WANT’ or are we gonna actually get to work here?”

“There was that one time with that industrial vacuum getting stuck to my face….” Spinister tilted his head, face scrunched in serious contemplation.

Well, what passed for it with Spinister.

“ _WHAT_ did I just say?!” Crankcase bellowed.

“He’s right. Kinda,” Misfire said. “Uh, Crankcase. Not Spinister. Though that whole vacuum thing happened, too. But I mean, you know, sitting here resting on our laurels and stuff, reminiscing about our glorious past when one of our own needs us.”

H-how the…? Glorious...what? Fulcrum blinked. Just. No.  But this is how Misfire always won—how he’s won last night about the dayroom thing: wearing down, some sort of sheer attrition of processing power.

“But we don’t know where he weeeeeeent!” Spinister whined. "And it's dark! And smells icky."

“Not up,” Misfire said, helpfully, before turning to survey, with a throwlamp, the cavern’s expanse stretched in front of them.  “Frag, that’s big.”

“If ANYONE says something like ‘that’s what you said last night’,” Crankcase snapped, “I will murder you. With death.”

Spinister gave an awkward shuffle of his feet. Close one, huh?  

“Murder…with death?” Fulcrum blinked.

Crankcase stormed up to him, glaring up into his yellow optics. “Wanna try me?” He twitched. “Misfire, you do not say a fraggin’ word, d’you hear me?”

“What? I wasn’t thinking anything.” Slightly too much startled innocence, even by Fulcrum’s rating. Frag, was everything here some sort of innuendo?

“Look. I just…yeah. I think we should find Grimlock.” And maybe sanity. Though those two didn’t seem to keep close companionship.

“Problem is, where do we even start looking?” Misfire said. The light played over long vertical stripes of stalactites and columns, ochre and brown shadows striping the uneven walls behind, until the light was swallowed in the darkness entirely. “This is hard.”

“We’re Decepticons,” Crankcase said. “We like things that are hard.” A long, awkward pause of muffled laughter, cut short by Crankcase’s glower. “Shut up. The fraggin’ lot of you.”

“Could start over there,” Fulcrum said, pointing to the left. “You know, road and all.” Which was weird enough, a big broad paved road snaking along one wall of a massive cave system, but, well, you saw things in the Decepticon army. THINGS.  And roads led somewhere.  And right now they were...nowhere. It seemed logical.

“Starting with the obvious? I like it, pinhead!” Misfire slapped him on the back. “We’ll make a Scavenger out of you yet!”


End file.
